3 held for duping Bengaluru techie of Rs 11 crore in digital arrest
The Bengaluru police arrested three people from Gujarat and Delhi for the cybercrime that also involved a fake ‘Supreme Court’ trial and was monitored from Dubai.
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On Sunday, Bengaluru Northeast cybercrime police announced the arrests of 24-year-old Karan, a resident of Gujarat, and Tarun Natani, 26, who is from Delhi. (Express)Vijay Kumar K S, a 39-year-old software professional, made a remarkable Rs 11 crore from Rs 50 lakh invested in stocks over 10 years, only to lose it within a month through “digital arrest”, the Bengaluru police said. A significant portion of the money is suspected to have been sent to a man abroad through hawala trade.
On Sunday, Bengaluru Northeast cybercrime police announced the arrests of 24-year-old Karan, a resident of Gujarat, and Tarun Natani, 26, who is from Delhi. They first arrested Dhaval Bhai Shah, a 35-year-old bullion trader from Gujarat. The accused are part of a nexus that allegedly siphoned Rs 11.83 crore from Vijay Kumar. Investigations have revealed that the operation was being monitored from Dubai.
The ‘digital arrest’
It all began on November 11 last year when Vijay Kumar received a call from someone claiming to be an official of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India. Claiming that his documents were used for illegal advertisements and messages, the caller said there were police cases against him in Mumbai. What baffled Vijay Kumar was that a “police officer” claimed Rs 6 crore had been laundered by a person named Naresh Goyal using his documents.
Threatening to arrest him and his family members, the cybercriminals allegedly coerced Vijay Kumar into transferring Rs 11.83 crore to a Gujarat-based bullion trader over the next month. During this time, Vijay Kumar was “interrogated” on a virtual platform and even tried before a fake court that was claimed to be the Supreme Court.
On December 12, 2024, a month after his “digital arrest”, Vijay Kumar walked into a police station to explain his ordeal. It was too late for him to realise that he had fallen victim to cybercrime, losing such a substantial amount of money.
How KYC documents helped police crack the case
The Bengaluru Northeast police discovered that Rs 7.5 crore had been transferred to an account held by Dhaval Bhai Shah. Upon interrogation, he said that Vijay Kumar had transferred the money to buy gold bullion, which was delivered to his associates.
Upon checking, it was found that the documents provided were indeed Vijay Kumar’s, but the phone number was different. As investigations continued, the police discovered that the SIM card was not active in India but had been activated from a store in Gujarat. The fraudsters had called in Vijay Kumar’s name to buy gold bullion and shared his documents.
When the police checked the contact number of the person who collected the gold bullion from Shah, they traced him to Karan, who owned a shop in Dubai but was living in Gujarat. The police tracked him down and found that he had purchased several SIM cards under different names from Tarun Natani, who owned a mobile shop in Delhi. The investigation revealed that Karan used to buy SIM cards from Natani and send them to Dubai, from where calls on WhatsApp were made to “virtually” arrest potential fraud victims.
During interrogation, the accused said that a person named Neel Bhai, who has settled in Dubai, operated the fraud and that they received a commission. A significant portion of the money was converted into gold bullion, which was then sold in India, with the proceeds being transferred through hawala channels.
“We have frozen accounts containing about Rs 3.75 crore. We suspect the majority of the money has been transferred through hawala trade to ‘Neel Bhai’,” said a police officer.
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